Year 1 Term 3: Church History

The New Testament BackgroundLecture 1C21: In this first lecture on Church History we look at the societies, cultures and religions of the Near East in the 3 centuries before the birth of Christ. Our lecturer is the historian Dimitri Brady.21-ntbackground-history.pdfAdobe Acrobat document [141.8 KB]

The Early Christian CenturiesLecture 1C22: This lecture looks at the ante-Nicene Fathers, particularly the historical background to the speculative theological trends in the Alexandrian tradition and some new emerging heresies. (The historical references in the New Testament will be considered in Year 2 in the New Testament unit).22-early-christian-centuries.pdfAdobe Acrobat document [165.2 KB]

The Church of the CouncilsLecture 1C23 : Why did the Church Councils become necessary? How did the Church change and rise to the challenge of its new honoured position in the Roman Empire? These are just some of the questions addressed in this lecture.23-church-of-councils.pdfAdobe Acrobat document [637.0 KB]

The Greek - Latin DivideLecture 1C24: The modern world still bears the scars and indeed new wounds inflicted by the legacy of the Great Schism in Europe. This lecture traces its origins from when the west was still Orthodox through to the fall of Constantinople.24-greek-latin-divide.pdfAdobe Acrobat document [112.5 KB]

Decline and MetamorphosisLecture 1C25 : In Lecture 24 we looked at the growing spiritual alienation of east and west from before the Great Schism to the Fall of Constantinople. In this sister lecture we look at the geopolitical aspects of the decline of Byzantium after the Schism and the growth of Hellenism after the Fall of Constantinople. In the west in this period we explore both the power and the weakness of the papacy, theology in the context of feudalism and the impact of the Renaissance.25-decline-metamorphosis.pdfAdobe Acrobat document [133.7 KB]

The Growth of Russian Orthodoxy and the Reformation in the WestLecture 1C26: This two part lecture explorers the development of Russian Orthodoxy from Kiev to the autocephaly of the Moscow Patriarchate and then back in Europe we examine the political and religious tensions that rent asunder the unity of the medieval Roman Catholic Church.26-russia-reformation.pdfAdobe Acrobat document [140.8 KB]

Reason and RevolutionLecture 1C27: In this lecture we see how the dawn of the modern era led to upheavals, political and spiritual in both east and west. It sets the scene for the following lecture which goes on to explore the responses to modernity in both the Orthodox Church and the increasingly fractured Christian west.27-reason-revolution.pdfAdobe Acrobat document [166.4 KB]

Nationalism and Modernity (1800 - 1900)Lecture 1C28: In the west, the 19th Century was characterised by idealism, romanticism and bitter struggles between traditionalism and modernity. In the Orthodox east the progressive decline of the Ottoman Empire generated nationalistic sentiment in liberated regions, putting huge strains on the Orthodox ecclesiological model. This lecture examines the predicaments and adaptations of 19th Century Christianity, Orthodox and heterodox.28-nationalism-modernity.pdfAdobe Acrobat document [146.9 KB]

Secularism and Atheism (1900 to the present)Lecture 1C29: The 20th Century saw the rise of a persecuting atheism and a religious and ethnic intolerance rarely if ever seen in human history before, certainly not on this scale. Russia recovered but many Christian communities in Asia Minor and the Near East have continually been hard pressed and forced in many cases to emigrate. Meanwhile this was a time of great modernising change in Roman Catholicism and an occasion of exponential fracturing of the Protestant world with the proliferation of sects and the rise of Pentecostalism. Secularism has its roots perhaps in all these movements and this lecture explores how this might be so.29-secularism-atheism.pdfAdobe Acrobat document [120.1 KB]